MARTIN COUNTY — When Martin Memorial Medical Center hired a jet in 2003 to repatriate a brain-damaged patient to his native Guatemala, hospital officials “never took the law into their own hands,” according to documents filed ahead of a June 23 trial.

“They never stuffed Mr. (Luis Alberto) Jimenez in the back of a van under the cover of darkness and drove him out of town,” Martin Memorial attorney Scott Michaud stated in papers detailing Jimenez’s predawn flight to Guatemala City on July 10, 2003.

“When Martin Memorial discharged Jimenez to the facility in Guatemala,” Michaud noted, “Martin Memorial did so with the honest belief based on the evidence it uncovered, that the hospital in Guatemala was properly equipped to care for him.”
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FORT PIERCE — A registered sex offender and his girlfriend were arrested Tuesday following allegations that they beat an 11-year-old girl and her siblings, according to records released Wednesday.

The 11-year-old girl told sheriff’s investigators John Louis Cooper, 30, burned her with a cigarette lighter. She said she feared being raped by Cooper because he “raped a 13-year-old girl before,” records show.

Cooper was convicted in 2002 of lewd act on a minor less than 16 and is a registered sex offender because of it, records show.

The girl said Cooper and his 32-year-old girlfriend, Kathy Ann Carson, push them around and punch her and her 9-year-old brother “all the time,” according to the report.

The brother had an injury on his finger he said was caused by Cooper purposely burning him with a lighter, records show.

The elder girl said Cooper punches her in the chest when she misbehaves, the records show. The boy said he has difficulty with bed-wetting and Cooper punches him in the chest because of it. The boy also was found to have a “fungal scalp infection” that had been present for months.

Cooper faces two counts of child abuse, and Carson was arrested on a single child abuse charge. Carson’s charge stems from alleged abuse on a 4-year-old girl. A doctor examined the 4-year-old girl and the two older children and founds signs of abuse or neglect.

Cooper and his girlfriend live in the 5100 block of La Salle Street.

By Will Greenlee, TCPalm.com

STUART — A Martin County grand jury on Wednesday returned first-degree murder and robbery indictments against two Stuart residents accused in the April 5 beating death of Keith A. Hall, who died three days after being attacked.

Charged are James Louis LaForteza, 29, and Kobi Anderson, 15, who authorities say beat Hall into unconsciousness to steal $40 he’d shown the man and teen in an attempt to buy drugs. (more…)

MARTIN COUNTY — Former Martin County Commissioner John William Holt Jr., who helped create the original Martin County Comprehensive Land Use Plan, died Monday at Treasure Coast Hospice. He was 79.

“He had been ill for some time,” said his wife of 57 years, Evelyn. “His heart just gave out.”

Born in Pahokee, Dec. 15, 1929, the son of John W. Holt Sr. and his wife, Hosea, Holt grew up on a ranch in western Martin County. His brother was former Martin County Sheriff Jim Holt. Like his father and brother, Holt was a rancher.
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Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing

A jury has sentenced Ricardo Sanchez Jr. and Daniel Troya to death for killing the Escobedo family of four along Florida’s Turnpike in St. Lucie County.

The federal death penalty is different from the state of Florida’s death sentence in many ways.

Only 51 inmates are on federal Death Row in Terre Haute, Ind. Florida houses 392. Crimes punishable by the federal death penalty include genocide, killing witnesses, in a trial, terrorism and murder committed as part of a drug enterprise.

Florida has executed 67 men and women since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976. The feds have executed three men since Congress reinstated it in 1988. Some of the more famous of those executed were Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of sabotage for selling atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

Here’s some of those executed since 1927:

James Horace Alderman

1927: James Horace Alderman, known as “King of the Rumrunners,” was intercepted by a Coast Guard vessel 30 miles off Florida’s coast. His boat was laden with alcohol during the era of Prohibition. As Alderman boarded the vessel, he pulled out his pistol. When two Coast Guardsmen and a Secret Service agent rushed him, he shot them all dead. Later, his execution was scheduled for the Broward County Jail, but the county wanted it to occur on federal property. So a makeshift gallows was erected at the Coast Guard hangar.

“When this is read I will have passed over the brink of eternity into the Great Beyond. “I would like to state through the medium of The Miami Herald that I am feeling fine, physically, mentally and spiritually. With the wonderful comfort and strength that I received from Jesus Christ, I am assured that when tomorrow comes I will go with smiles of comfort on my face. … “As I sit here in my cell I can look back and see just what caused me to be where I am today. Drunkenness first starts a young man to gambling — and swearing grows on him — and from that step he becomes hardened in his heart in envy and hatred toward mankind. Then, as he grows up, he becomes what you would call educated to crime. Bootlegging and smuggling is the next step. And there are other angles of downfall that lead to the devil. “The money I made neither did me nor my dear family any good. We thought it did, but no. You can see what it has done — a death sentence by hanging — and a broken-hearted family.”

Read the 1929 Time magazine account of his hanging, here. (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — Ermanne Metelu, 39, accused of beating his wife following an argument over her wishes not to attend church Sunday is facing a battery charge, according to police.

The 33-year-old victim told investigators Sunday she’d gotten home late the night before from work and that she argued with her husband at their home in the 600 block of Southwest Old Briar Avenue, about her not wanting to go to church. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — A Port St. Lucie woman accused of mistreating and neglecting 11 adopted children is scheduled to accept a plea deal that will cap her possible prison sentence at 20 years, according to court records and a prosecutor on the case.

Judith Leekin, 63, was arrested in July 2007 and charged with 10 felonies (an 11th recently was added) alleging she abused and neglected children she adopted in New York City between July 1998 and April 1996 using fake names and aliases. She moved with the children to Port St. Lucie in 1998. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — An apparent spat involving sardines and Vienna sausages erupted into a beating and ended with a 43-year-old local man going to jail, according to an arrest affidavit released Monday.

The victim on Sunday told investigators she went to visit her ex-boyfriend, Maxie L. Davis, 43, who lives in the apartment behind hers, and they watched television.

The victim said Davis, of the 3500 block of Sloan Road, went out and she popped open a can of sardines and some Vienna Sausages, a popular canned wiener product. (more…)